THE HERRENHAUS FORFEIT - Book review

 

Paul Phillips’s second book in the ‘Chasing Mercury’ series, The Herrenhaus Forfeit was published in 2024 and continues the story begun in The Borodino Sacrifice. Certainly, the books can be read independently, though it’s preferable they’re read in sequence.

Former US Army sniper Sam Bradley is being recruited by the shadowy character Doyle to chase down the Mercury outfit headed by Mila to discover what they were seeking. ‘Bradley’s sense of nausea increased. It was the motion sickness you got from the long, inescapable slide to inevitability... The thing about the long slide, the thing that let you cope with the dread of its inescapable outcome, was that wrapped up in the motion sickness was something else. Exhilaration’ (pp36/37).

Again, we tour the detritus of post-war Germany as we follow Bradley who has infiltrated a gangster group involved in smuggling whatever brought profit in the black market, while also dodging Nazis and Soviets. ‘There had been a serious lack of accommodation in Hamburg since the night the world had learned a new term: firestorm’ (p88).

As before there are many instances where Phillips conveys a scene with a minimum of description:

‘... a heavy vehicle had recently ploughed the neglected crust of mouldered mud and frozen leaves’ (p116).

The plot is convoluted, involving competing groups in a maelstrom of geo-political upheaval. There are double-crosses, betrayals and heroism, and death stalks nearby most of the time. Friendships are forged as are identity papers. There’s a sly name-change from Pfeffer to Salzen and a couple of fascinating character descriptions of middle-aged Marjorie Jessop and conniving Jack Penny. It’s not without humour; for example, when Bradley attempts to help some associates pretend to be Americans, ‘Most importantly, he handed out the Wrigley’s.’ (p159).

The blurb – and the previous book – indicate that Mila is searching for a lost child, which is not easy considering the mortality of children in the war-torn continent. ‘Before adoption, all Aryanised children were renamed, to bury their old identities, and welcome them as lifelong members of the race’ (p126). Though slight of stature, Mila is tough and determined – an irresistible force (p180).

Without telegraphing any spoilers, the forfeit of the title is referred to on p139 – it’s a kind of deal between Mila and some gangsters, where neither party actually trusts the other.

I felt the involvement of the criminal underground was inspired and realistic, the kind of thing that Len Deighton would have attempted. A number of chapter-endings reminded me of Adam Hall’s Quiller books where the protagonist would face a serious predicament at the end of a chapter and then in the next chapter he/she is Scott-free and the reasons are divulged after the event; it works well.

Mila and Sam are a great team.

Needless to say, in due course I shall be reading the third book in the trilogy, The Safehaven Complex.

Editorial comment for the benefit of writers:

‘... bring the leather doctor’s bag...’ (p95). This should read ‘bring the doctor’s leather bag’ or ‘bring the leather doctor’s-bag’ to avoid the perception that the doctor was made of leather.

‘She hissed “Now!”’(p174)  – there’s no susurration here, which is necessary for a hiss. Maybe whispered harshly or grated would be better?

THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER - Book review

Tom Clancy’s debut thriller The Hunt for Red October was published in 1984 and surprisingly I’ve just got round to reading it 41 years later! It’s obvious why it became a best-seller – the amassed technical and logistic and intelligence detail reeks of authenticity.

This review will be short, since it’s likely that most readers here have seen the film starring Sean Connery (1990). The story covers eighteen days from December 3.

Soviet Captain Ramius is taking the new ballistic missile submarine Red October to sea for an tactical and equipment validation exercise. By page 6 it is clear that Ramius intends to kill the political officer Putin. From that moment the suspense builds and does not let up.

Both the US monitoring ships and the Soviets in the exercise area lose all trace of Red October.

CIA Analyst Jack Ryan gleans information which leads him to the incredible conclusion that the Red October is sailing towards North America to defect.

So begins a chase, involving the real USS Dallas, HMS Invincible, other US vessels and a number of Soviet craft. Open conflict is a real threat – by accident or by design. Geopolitics are involved; obviously, if it is known that the Red October is being held by the Americans, the USSR will demand its return by international law, since neither was at war.

The various personalities on October and Dallas are drawn very well. The politics are sketched out by the President, the head of CIA and others believably. All in all, the 477 pages flew by.

RECOLLECTION OF A JOURNEY - Book review

R.C. Hutchinson’s novel Recollection of a Journey was published in 1952; this edition 1983.

Several of Hutchinson’s novels are about a journey – the human journey through life, with its entire vicissitudes, and this book is no exception. It’s narrated by Stefanie Kolbeck, looking back as an old woman to a time in 1940 when Poland was invaded by the German Army and then by the Soviets. ‘One’s memories of childhood are seldom clear visually’ (p9).

In 1940 Stefanie is pregnant. She has a young daughter Annette with her as she boarded a train to escape bombardment, accompanied by her father-in-law, Julius; they’re returning to the Kolbeck family home, Setory. Her ex-husband Casimir had absconded and she had since wed his brother Victor who was in the Polish army.

History tells us that the contest was uneven, though the Poles fought valiantly. ‘These Prussians, and those barbarians on the other side, they suppose they can make an end of Poland by seizing our people and crushing their bodies; they think they can bury the whole history of our nationhood, make us forget our own tongue...’ (p29). ‘We get our greatness from suffering’ (p227).

When the Germans fled and the Russians took over, life didn’t improve for the Kolbecks and the villagers nearby. ‘All the official guidance we had came from the area propagandist, one much lower in intelligence than most of his kind’ (p224) who extolled the superiority of freedoms enjoyed in the Soviet Union...

The descriptions of the family’s constant upheaval, the privations, the move from one labour camp to another, are thoroughly immersive; the reader is there, sharing this first-person narrative. We view scenes in detail through her eyes. ‘... the image of that session remains upon a separate page of my memory, like a photograph in a family album; blurred at the edges now...’ (p55).

Julius’s ageing father was with the family for a while. ‘... even if he was in physical pain his clouded eyes would be faintly lit with amusement over something scratched from his mind’s vast field...’ (p109). ‘... but in their pinched and cheese-white faces I saw the settled apathy of those to whom life is only death’s postponement’ (p109).

When the family and the villagers are herded towards the train and its cattle trucks the imagery seems totally real: ‘It was light too feeble to reach ourselves. In the darkness where we stood we were only spectators of a shadow play that was at once unreal and oddly sinister, where a waving arm would suddenly protrude from the black sierra, where the glint from a bayonet showed like a falling star’ (230).

Amidst hardship, loss, brutality, ignorance, and death, Stefanie learns compassion and perseverance. ‘The heart, I think, which may be convulsed by lesser griefs, is an instrument too finely made to respond at once to the highest charge of sorrow; it will vibrate a little, and that vibration must continue through the years before the charge is absorbed’ (p121).

Throughout, the novel reads like Stefanie’s autobiography, revealing the suffering of innocent casualties of war, displaced, traumatised and exploited, with great observation, imagery and prose:

‘He did pause for a few moments, as if some breeze had brought to his mind a dust which had to settle’ (p181)

‘He drank it slowly, making little grimaces, as children do with medicine; and this reminded me how much the contentment of the cold depends on the precise observance of their simple routines’ (p211).

‘... that Siberian morning light which gives a stone-like quality to the earth and to every object that it finds...’ (p286).

‘... it began to rain, and soon, at a petulant shout from our commander, the prostrate figures, like the dead summoned to judgement, were struggling all together to their feet’ (p287)

‘... behind the stygian hills the sky had become a furnace in the sunrise; ahead, where the river turned, a soft-fleshed shoulder of the farther heights had caught from this fire an unearthly, roseate glow, and in the thorny scrub which lined the river’s edge that fluorescence was broken into shimmering gold by a million particles of ice’ (p298).

For Stefanie, the journey ends on the Caspian, though we know she eventually moved to the west. It’s a remarkable book by an excellent writer, neglected for too long.

Hutchinson (1907 – 1975) wrote seventeen novels, many of them best-sellers and book club choices in their day.  I’ve previously read his A Child Possessed and March the Ninth which didn’t disappoint.

THE ALPHA LIST - Book review

 THE ALPHA LIST

 

Ted Allbeury served as an officer in the Intelligence Corps, working on SOE counter-intelligence, so his espionage books have the ring of authenticity. During the Cold War he was captured and tortured when running agents across the border between East and West Germany, and he hints at this on p75:

‘Laker had been killed in Oslo by a KGB operator a couple of years ago. Laker ran a line-crossing operation across the Finnish frontier into the USSR. He had lasted about eight months which was the equivalent of three score years and ten in that part of the world doing that particular job… Laker had been a survivor from a previous line-crossing network and ought to have been pulled out…’

The Alpha List was published in 1979. It’s a first-person narrative by agent Dave Marsh, who has been tasked with investigating an old friend, a Labour MP, Charlie Kelly, who is suspected of passing information to the Soviets. There’s talk of an Alpha List, which could be significant, but Charlie won’t disclose any details.

It’s fascinating how we get to know these two men growing up in post-war England, and how their politics and idealism change them.

Marsh is involved in a game of cat-and-mouse not only with his own people but also the Russians. The truth that is finally revealed to Marsh is devastating.

This was written when the Soviet Union was a powerful protagonist, before it was broken up. When the UK, not Europe, was in effect the front line against Soviet aggression. Would the United States have risked a Third World War if the USSR had attacked the UK?

Some of Allbeury’s books have downbeat endings; be warned, this is one of them.